


First-Day Jitters

by innocent_until_proven_geeky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Anxious Ned Leeds, Anxious Peter Parker, Gen, Pre-Spider Bite Peter Parker, Pre-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Trans Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 16:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19088344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innocent_until_proven_geeky/pseuds/innocent_until_proven_geeky
Summary: With all of the changes he and his little family have gone through over the summer, Peter is terrified to start middle school—until something good comes out of it.





	First-Day Jitters

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Um... so I guess, first fic on Ao3, hi guys! I’ve been obsessed with Peter/Ned Interwebs whatever for a few weeks now and this fic is just? Them meeting? Or how I imagine they might meet, I guess. There’s a mention of Peter being trans in here but I am cisgender, so I tried not to go into detail about dysphoria or anything like that because I don’t know what that’s like but if you have any suggestions about how to write Peter as a young trans character or little things I can fix in this here story, feel free to leave a comment! Other than that... enjoy, y’all!

Peter stepped out of the car. The middle school looked ahead of him, and suddenly but very expectedly his hands began to sweat, wrapped around the straps of his backpack. He fought the urge to get back in the car with May.

Starting middle school was hard. Starting middle school without any of his old friends felt impossible.

May and Ben had decided to move at the end of fifth grade. The Parkers hadn’t lived in a great part of town, and now that Peter was old enough to stay home alone (doors and windows locked, just in case, and he was always good about that), May was working again. Her second income meant that the little family had just enough to move somewhere safer. It was New York, so, when she thought Peter couldn’t hear, May would mention, “Not safe, just safer for our boy,” and Ben would grunt an agreement, and then in the middle of the summer, they packed in a whirlwind and moved.

And now Peter was at a different school, and he didn’t know anyone, and it was terrifying, and his heart was definitely going to beat right out of his chest—

“Have a good day, sweetheart!” May’s voice grounded him, and he turned to wave as his aunt drove off.

“Making new friends is easy,” she had said last night to soothe her panicky nephew. “Just invite someone nice to have a LEGO-building contest with you.”

With that memory firmly in his mind, determined to obey his doting aunt, he squared his shoulders and followed the crowd of students into the doors.

::::

Sixth graders had homeroom first. Peter figures that seventh and eighth graders did, too—that seemed logical enough—but he knew next to nothing about this school. It wasn’t the school he’d originally toured, or registered for classes for with his fellow fifth graders. It was new. Everything about it was new to Peter, except perhaps the sort-of sagging panels in the ceiling and the flickering fluorescent lights in the hallways. That was easily recognizable as what he and May had termed “old school syndrome.” His original middle school had it too.

And then he was fighting off another mild wave of sadness and a (much stronger) feeling of panic.

Peter’s homeroom teacher was the type who never assigned seats. Some of the older students at Peter’s would-be school had mentioned that there were occasionally teachers like that. Another similarity.

Peter day near the front. He couldn’t sit in the very front row when there were still plenty of open seats—that would not be cool—but he couldn’t see from too far back, and Ben had told him that he wouldn’t be able to get new glasses for a couple more months. Something about insurance. Peter had shrugged it off at first, but now he was regretting not insisting. Even in the second row, things were blurry. Not completely unreadable, so Peter was sure he’d survive. But blurry.

In his periphery (which was, of course, slightly blocked by the earpieces of his old glasses), Peter saw someone else sit next to him. There were still several seats left over, and Peter’s heart soared and he fought the urge to grin at the prospect of someone making a friend out of him, rather than the other way around.

“Oh, sorry.” The other boy’s voice was surprisingly deep for an eleven-year-old. Not Deep, like Adult Deep (Peter said it with the capital letters in his brain), but deeper than he expected. “I thought you were someone else.” He looked up in time to see the last of a smile fall off the boy’s round face.

Now Peter was fighting off tears again as the boy reached for the backpack he had just dropped on the ground with a broad hand.

Peter tried to laugh it off. “Nope. I’m just me.” But the other boy had started to turn away, and if he really was nice he couldn’t let this opportunity slip past. And so he stuck out his hand and added, “My name is Peter.”

The other boy turned back around, dropped his backpack for the second time that morning, and took Peter’s hand. “Ned.” Peter couldn’t help but notice that the other boy’s hand was sweaty, too, and he realized that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the only person anxious about starting middle school.

Ned looked Peter up and down after they dropped their hands, and Peter responded by shrinking back. He was wearing clothing as baggy as possible without breaking dress code, and he knew he didn’t need to bind, for himself or to look more masculine (and anyway, Ben and May could barely afford Peter’s school supplies this year, let alone a binder). But maybe he still looked like a girl?

After what felt like an eternity, or maybe even two, Ned finally asked, “Is that a Star Trek hoodie?”

Peter grinned, both relief and excitement at the question flooding through him. “It’s supposed to resemble Chekov’s uniform from the reboot, but I feel like yellow isn’t as good a color on me as it is on him.”

“Duuuuude,” Ned said. “I’m more of a Star Wars person myself, but my mom and older brother would be way jealous.”

Peter put his chin in his hand and tapped his cheek with his fingers. He hadn’t noticed Ned sit down until now, but it made him happy that someone wanted to sit by him. “May and Ben—my aunt and uncle, I live with them—they don’t like Star Wars very much. So I’ve never seen it. They don’t like Star Trek much, either, I think they just don’t like space-themed science fiction I’m general, but I found reruns of the original series while I was channel surfing one time and I really liked it, and so they borrowed a couple of the movies from the library, and occasionally they indulge me being a Trek fan with gifts when they have the extra money, and now, well, here I am!”

After he finished talking, he realized Ned’s jaw had dropped.

“You’ve never seen Star Wars?” He repeated it like a question, completely incredulous.

Peter shook his head.

“You have to come over to my house. We have all of them! And copies of The Clone Wars. They are completely necessary for you to see. They’re classics!”

Peter was about to respond when someone tapped Ned on the shoulder, and Peter lost his new acquaintance. He grumbled a little to himself, then decided to slip zoned a note about watching Star Wars. Passing notes was a cool middle school thing, right?

::::

Ned was actually in almost all of Peter’s classes, which was lucky for the new kid because Ned knew the school like the back of his own hand (“My mom is the principal, so it’s not really that cool, but it means I’ll never be late to class and get in trouble with her”), and they even had lunch together. Ned kept getting stopped or interrupted by elementary school friends, including someone who did actually look remarkably like Peter, and that made him a little jealous. So far, Ned was his only friend, because everyone from his elementary school was at a different middle school.

At lunch, the pair sat alone, which surprised Peter since Ned had seemed so popular in between classes, and they talked about everything under the sun. Ned’s Family was from the Philippines, and he had gone to visit his cousins over the summer (“How much did that cost!?” “Not as much as it sounds like, I stayed with them instead of in a hotel and I was there long enough that the plane tickets were worth the expense.”). He had a pet tarantula, and Peter decided that he absolutely needed to see it.

After a few minutes of chatter and eating middle school lunch food, which was far better than what was available at elementary school, Ned began somberly, “A lot of people here know me because my mom is the principal, or because I’ve had siblings go to school here, or from elementary school. But they don’t like the things I like. You know, Star Wars and basically anything Steven Spielberg related. And they think it’s weird that I speak Tagalog, even though obviously I speak English as my first language. And no one’s ever really wanted to see my tarantula before.”

“But they’re all talking to you,” Peter protested with a mouth full of school pizza.

“It’s just for brownie points.” Ned’s insistence was dark and defeated, like he already knew how the school year was going to pan out. “They think if they look like they’re my friends, my mom will go easy on me when they get in trouble. Like they’ll have a ‘get out of detention free’ card.” He sighed. “I think they forget I live with her too. My dad is the principal at the elementary school I went to and they did the same thing then.” Ned stabbed at some leafy greens—something that wasn’t quite a salad—with a plastic fork. “That’s not why you want to come over, is it?”

When Ned looked up, it was like he was pleading with Peter to really try to be his friend. Peter, on the other hand, was startled that it was even a question. But at least now he understood why no one was sitting with them. Small talk was for the hallways. If people really wanted to talk to you, they’d sit with you at lunch.

“Man, if I had a phone I would totally text Aunt May right now and ask if I can come visit you and your tarantula after school!” Peter put his pizza down, gesticulating wildly. “Spiders are so cool. Plus obviously I need to watch Star Wars! And anyway,” he added, calming down just a little, “regardless of the cool stuff you have, I think you’re just cool! I want to hang out with you. I can’t believe....” He trailed off, not sure how to say what he was thinking. Not without hurting Ned’s feelings. And after having to tell every teacher so far that he goes by “Peter”, Ned was already the only person in the entire sixth grade who was still willing to talk to him. But the longer the silence, the more Ned’s face fell, until in a panic Peter finally finished, “I can’t believe other people don’t see a guy who speaks two languages and owns a tarantula as the coolest kid in school!”

Ned beamed and returned to his food with vigor.

Peter didn’t even need to invite Ned over to have a LEGO-building contest. It kind of just happened a week after Peter finally met Mister Snuffle-Fluff the Tarantula (“I was seven”). Although, Peter reasoned, it wasn’t really a contest if you raced to each build half of the same LEGO set and then put it together.


End file.
